Turner Prize 40th Anniversary Exhibition Opens at Tate Britain

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Painting, sculpture, and installation dominate this year’s edition of the Turner Prize, which opened at Tate Britain today.

Pictured above, Delaine Le Bas’ immersive multimedia installation spans three rooms, and consists of painted fabrics (most of which was painted in-situ), sculpture, sound, film, performance, and costumes. Motifs like horses, limbs, abstract shapes, and mythical creatures draw from the artist’s Roma heritage. Amy Emmerson Martin, Tate’s assistant curator of contemporary British art, explained that Le Bas’ installation investigates ‘themes around death, loss, and renewal’, with each room akin to an ‘act’ that takes the viewer on a performative journey.

Claudette Johnson, who was nominated for exhibitions at London‘s Courtauld Gallery and at Ortuzar Projects in New York, is showing large-scale mixed media portraits of family and friends. Her Turner presentation features existing and new works, including a double portrait of her sons titled Friends in Green + Red on Yellow (2023).

‘You see these two friends leaning in towards each other with their body language, maybe sharing a conversation or secret,’ Martin said. ‘It feels very much that you are walking into part of the family.’

Jasleen Kaur‘s sonic and sculptural installation includes a red Ford Escort, a series of automated worship bells, and a self-playing accordion. At intervals, snippets of Bob Marley and N-Trance’s 1994 track ‘Set You Free’ can be heard from the sound system inside the car—songs that the artist and her family listened to in her childhood.

‘It’s this idea of a car whizzing by on a hot summer’s day and getting intermittent sounds of different songs and artists,’ Martin said. ‘A lot of [Kaur’s] practice explores cultural and political memory, but also family memory and how that can sort of link to a broader, global societal memory. The sounds in the rooms play on this idea of sonic memory.’

Pio Abad‘s installation of sculpture, drawing, and museum collection objects comes from his recently closed exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, To Those Sitting in Darkness (10 February–8 September 2024). Martin described Abad’s work as a ‘deep investigation into museological practices’ and, in parallel, a more personal exploration of the history of the Marcos’ dictatorial regime in the Philippines. One sculpture, placed centrally on a low, oversized plinth is an enlarged, concrete version of a bracelet that belonged to former first lady Imelda Marcos, whom Abad has described as both ‘his monster and his muse, in many ways’.

‘He created this with his wife, who’s also a jewellery designer called Frances Wadsworth Jones,’ Martin said. ‘And the idea of enlarging it and placing it on a low plinth was to give it the [appearance] of lying in state. It could be seen as a kind of mourning of the loss of political freedom in the Philippines during that time.’

On the shared synergy of the four nominees, Martin said, ‘they all have incredibly socially engaged practices. All four of them look at cultural and political memory, but also family memory. Each of them in their own individual ways are speaking to different social concerns at the moment. It’s a kind of investigation and exploration that they all share, and I think it’s incredibly exciting.’

Choosing the winner this year are jurors Rosie Cooper (director of Wysing Arts Centre), Ekow Eshun (writer, broadcaster, and curator), Sam Thorne (CEO of Japan House London), Lydia Yee (curator and art historian), and Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson.

The winner, who will receive £25,000, will be announced on 3 December. The other shortlisted artists will each receive £10,000.

The Turner Prize exhibition continues through 16 February 2025. —[O]

Main image: Delaine Le Bas. Exhibition view: Turner Prize 2024, Tate Britain, London (25 September 2024–16 February 2025). © Tate Photography, Josh Croll. Courtesy Tate.